Joshua David Bell (born December 9, 1967) is an American Grammy Award-winning violinist.

Bell was born in Bloomington, Indiana, United States, the son of a psychologist and a therapist. Bell's parents were Shirley and Alan P. Bell, Professor Emeritus of Indiana University, in Bloomington, and a former Kinsey researcher. His father is of Scottish descent, and his mother is Jewish (his maternal grandfather was born in Israel and his maternal grandmother was from Minsk). Bell told The Jewish Journal, "I identify myself as being Jewish".

Bell began taking violin lessons at the age of four after his mother discovered that her son had taken rubber bands from around the house and stretched them across the handles of his dresser drawer to pluck out music he had heard her play on the piano. His parents got a scaled-to-size violin for their then five-year-old son and started giving him lessons. A bright student, Bell took to the instrument but lived an otherwise normal midwest Indiana life playing video games and excelling at sports, namely tennis and bowling, even placing in a national tennis tournament at the age of ten.

Joshua (Hebrew: יְהוֹשֻׁעַ‎‎ Yĕhôshúa‘; Greek: Ἰησοῦς, Arabic: يوشع بن نون‎ Yūshaʿ ibn Nūn), is a figure in the Torah, being one of the spies for Israel (Num 13-14) and in few passages as Moses's assistant. He is the central character in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Joshua. According to the books Exodus, Numbers and Joshua, he became the leader of the Israelite tribes after the death of Moses; his name was Hoshe'a the son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, but Moses called him Yehoshu'a (Joshua) (Numbers 13:16) the name by which he is commonly known; and he was born in Egypt prior to the Exodus, and was probably the same age as Caleb, with whom he is occasionally associated.

He was one of the twelve spies of Israel sent by Moses to explore the land of Canaan. (Numbers 13:1-16) After the death of Moses, he led the Israelite tribes in the conquest of Canaan, and allocated the land to the tribes. According to Biblical chronology, Joshua lived between 1500–1390 BCE, or sometime in the late Bronze Age. According to Joshua 24:29, Joshua died at the age of 110.

Josef Gingold (Russian: Джозеф Гингольд; October 28 [O.S. October 15] 1909 – January 11, 1995) was a Russian-Jewish-born classical violinist and teacher, who lived most of his life in the United States. At the time of his death he was considered one of the most influential violin masters in the United States with many successful students.

Gingold was born in Brest-Litovsk, Russian Empire (now Brest, Belarus), and emigrated in 1920 to the United States where he studied violin with Vladimir Graffman in New York City. He then moved to Belgium for several years to study with master violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. He gave the first performance of Ysaÿe's 3rd Sonata for Solo Violin. In 1937, Gingold won a spot in the NBC Symphony Orchestra, with Arturo Toscanini as its conductor; he then served as the concertmaster (and occasional soloist) of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and later was the Cleveland Orchestra's concertmaster under conductor George Szell.

Gingold edited numerous violin technique books and orchestral excerpt collections. He taught at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music for more than thirty years, until his death in 1995. His pupils included Anne Shih, Joshua Bell, Shony Alex Braun, Andrés Cárdenes, Corey Cerovsek, Cyrus Forough, Miriam Fried, Endre Granat, Ulf Hoelscher, Hu Nai-yuan, Jacques Israelievitch, Leonidas Kavakos, Chin Kim, Ronald Lantz, Jaime Laredo, Joseph Silverstein, and Gwen Thompson.

Ivan Alexander Galamian (January 23, 1903 – April 14, 1981) was an influential French violin teacher of the twentieth century.

He was born in Tabriz, Iran to an Armenian family, but his family soon emigrated to Moscow, Russia. Galamian studied violin at the School of the Philharmonic Society there with Konstantin Mostras (a student of Leopold Auer) until his graduation in 1919. He was thrown in jail at the age of fifteen by the Bolshevik government. It was the opera manager at the Bolshoi Theater who rescued Galamian; the manager argued that Galamian was a necessary part of the opera orchestra, and the government allowed him to go free. He moved to Paris, France, soon thereafter, studying under Lucien Capet in 1922 and 1923. In 1924 he debuted in Paris. Due to a combination of nerves, health, and a fondness for teaching, Galamian eventually gave up the stage in order to teach full-time. He became a faculty member of the Russian Conservatory in Paris, where he taught from 1925 until 1929. His earliest pupils in Paris include Vida Reynolds, the first woman in the Philadelphia Orchestra's first violin section, and Paul Makanowitzky.